Three Reviews

Delighted initially with the Three home broadband service.

Noticed they were overcharging - took three months to resolve

Then, bang.... internet starts playing up. Strangely the home broadband stops, but the 4g on my phone ( also from Three) is 25-30mbs.

Can’t wait for the contract to end

I left Three half a year ago so this is my review of my experience up until then.

When I first joined I had a 30GB contract SIM which was instantly bumped up to unlimited by staff when my wifi calling didn't work which was a nice upgrade.

The network was fine, it wasn't amazingly fast but for the price it did all it needed to and allowed me to stream video on the go. Any issues I had would end up getting fixed with credit applied.

Then it took a turn for the worst, more and more areas seemed to be under capacity. Started off with an area on the way to the city centre, then most of the route, then the train station. I complained about it and was given credit but nothing happened, then more and more areas became affected, I could no longer get signal in Birmingham New Street despite getting very good speeds before, the area on my way to work is now under capacity.

I decided it was enough and cancelled the contract, I had a bunch of empty promises of how it will be fixed soon and 5G will save us all but I had enough and left. This is a very situational issue but the way this was all handled should be known before joining.

I have since checked the areas in question on their issues checker, still reported as under capacity and will be fixed soon almost a year after being reported.

I live in a good Three signal area and have always preferred the flexibility of Mobile Broadband (MBB) over wired landline installations like ADSL.

I have a £12 a month 3G Three Mifi, capped at 20GB a month, but this soon gets eaten up with Netflix and the Amazon FireStick chomping through my allowance.

Three have been offering their Unlimited HomeFi for £22 a month, so I took the plunge and phoned for an upgrade.

Homefi (Huawei B311 Lite) arrived two days later, installation consisted of taking the SIM out of the MiFi and sticking it in the HomeFi.

Result is between 40-50 Mb/s down, and 25 Mb/s up.

The Homefi B311 router has only one Ethernet port, though it's Gigabit. A £15 ethernet switch extends this if needed.

There's also a phone jack on the back which is not operative, as mentioned on the Three web page.

Wifi is 2.5Ghz only.

One complication is my Sipgate Basic VOIP phone package. The handset is a Grandstream GXP1400 with two lines (SIP accounts). This works very well with the HomeFi router, the proviso being that the SIP ALG feature has to be disabled in the Homefi. No other configuration is needed.

So far, so good. I haven't need Three's support but others are reporting billing errors for the first month, so it's wise to check your Three account when you're up and running.

Generally a reasonable operator. Support has always been fine, although their Online Account pages don't offer the same upgrade deals as you get in their stores. Data speed is a bit on the weak side but I don't expect much from the cheapest operator, which gave me a few extra GigaByte's than their rivals.

My only real 3 Mobile UK gripe is with how some of my text messages don't get delivered, which is not a problem I've had in this area on other operators. Network coverage is also a bit more patchy.

Good for the money though and the recent removal of their Tethering (Personal Hotspot) cap is most welcome.

We rely on three for our main broadband connection (no fibre, very slow adsl). It failed today for the second time in a week. After 10 minutes we were in touch with their "customer service" operative. Told us they had a fault. We asked when it would be fixed. Told us they didn't know but would send us a text. We pointed out that their service was down and a text would not arrive, how about email (slow adsl is o.k. for that). Replied that they would send us a text.

Gave up.

The above is fairly typical of our experiences with their "customer services" - not much sign of "making it right".

If you have no alternative then use them. If there is an alternative I would suggest avoiding them like the plague.

As long as you don't need the support they are good.

Average speed:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/3765384303.png

I've been with Three for a few years and am pleased with their mobile broadband offering. I've used Three both on a mobile phone (The One Plan) and via a portable MiFi unit.

Coverage 6/10

Good coverage in the cities, varies indoors in some places. Seems to be on par with other networks when it comes to commuting, 3G drifting in and out of coverage. Overall I've had more availability from Three than I had from Orange, O2 and Vodafone, all of whom I have also used previously.

Three were happy to offer me a guarantee when I joined them - test for a week, if there is no coverage where I need it then I can cancel the contract with no penalty. I had full coverage and didn't need to. If you're unsure check the coverage maps and make a deal with them in person at your local Three store.

Services 7/10

Based on experience of mobile 3G coverage and also The One Plan. Data, throughput, voicemail, roaming, all standard stuff well implemented. Could be a bit slicker. Reliability has been good over the years I've used them with only a couple of half-day UK-wide wobbles on 3G recently, reported in the news when they happened.

Support 5/10

I've not really needed to use support but the phone support goes through to a foreign call center which is not very good and works to a script. That said, once you get someone who can help they tend to stick with you and try to resolve the problem as best they can.

Speed 10/10

Full marks here, Three's standard 3G is rapid and their DC-HSDPA "Ultrafast" 3G is not far off 4G speeds. 4G is rolling out now, available free to all customers who have suitable hardware, which is a good move considering how much the 4G incumbents want to charge for the privilege. Latency is quite poor at times but I think this is an artifact of mobile broadband in general.

Value 10/10

Full marks again. Great Ultrafast 3G and 4G speed and connectivity and realistic data packages at sensible prices. Happy customer.

Slow!

£15 and I got a much needed smart phone plus it is has unlimited data.

If you buy a just a sim card and put it in a phone that has an external antenna then you might get some nice speed. Plus If you do that you can have unlimited data with an annoynimous connection if you go via the pay as you go route.

http://www.gadgetsdealer.com/product162055.html

But when I was in the small Village I got no connection.

when I used orange I used up my data in one night even though it said unlimited. All I did was leave my gps on during the night and that broke the fair use. . .

In my review I am not going to count poor connection against three because I think phone manufacturers are simply not doing a good enough job because consumers don't pay attention to how well a phone connects, and so I think it is their fault.

The staff in the three store are no help.

In the end it is probably the best of a bad bunch.

Just to update the below, written in January:

Cell has been upgraded.

Now have an Edimax router and the E367 modem.

Performance averages 5.4Mbps down and 1Mbps up, latency averages about 70ms

Best seen is 6.6Mbps down 1.7Mbps up.

All other comments as previously

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Live 2.5km from the phone exchange, 2.8km from the Three cell.

ADSL manages a 1750 IP profile.

Three 3G averages between 2 and 3Mbps with the dongle indoors near a window. Local cell only 3.6Mbps, but due for upgrade to 7.2Mbps in 2011.

Speeds quite consistent, abandoned landline 2+ years ago in favour of 3G and haven't looked back - it can't match it.

No image compression, no apparent throttling of any particular protocols, YouTube and iPlayer stream find at standard definitions.

You need to change your port for SMTP to work (587 I think) but MS Exchange works as is.

One 2 day outage due to major issue with cell, took 48 hours to resolve. All other outages for upgrades informed in advance via control panel.

Latency averages 90ms so not good for gaming, but in every other way walks all over ADSL on a circa 3km long line.

A real alternative to ADSL with the proviso that we're in a rural area, and so I could possibly be one of only a handful of people using it.

Just thought i'd chuck a small review in here for 3 mobile broadband as ive been using it for a month now.

Positives:

Its fast
Its easy to connect plug and play
Its easy to top up
Great signal
You can game online with it!
30 pounds free credit (3gbs)

Negatives:

Its expensive
The support line im assuming maybe based in India

Its pretty easy to sum up 3 mobile broadband , its simple to use and the signal in my area is pretty good , im almost always maxed out on signal , it barely ever drops out for me and the download speeds are about 6meg , so around 700kbs tops! Ive gamed online with it you get about a 70 ping in London servers , and on world of warcraft i barely got any lag or drops at all it seemed to fine just as fine as threw the line broadband. You get a nice bundle of 30 pounds free credit as well when you first buy it , it easily trumps all its competitors for value for money when you first buy the dongle nearly all of the other company's don't give you free usage.

You can also get the pay per day services 2 pounds 99p 500megabytes to last you 24 hours which is ideal for a lot of people who just wanna quick browse during the day and night!

Overall.

7/10